Cream cheese is a spreadable, mild, uncured cheese which is distinguished from other cheese varieties in terms of its flavor and spreadability. The distinctive flavor of traditional cream cheese, referred to as a "cultured" or "diacetyl" flavor, is derived from fermentation of cream and milk with a bacterial starter culture containing two types of organisms which produce lactic acid (lactococcus organisms) and flavor compounds (leuconostoc and diacetylactis organisms). Butterfat, in a minimum amount of 33% by weight, is required in traditional cream cheese to enhance the cultured flavor and to provide a rounder, fuller flavor in the final product. Furthermore, butterfat is mostly responsible for the soft spreadability characteristics of traditional cream cheese. A process for manufacture of traditional cream cheese is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,387,276.
Increased consumer health awareness has generated a demand for dairy products having less butterfat and fewer calories than their traditional counterparts. In response, the dairy industry has developed a number of processes to produce low fat or nonfat dairy products including cream cheese products. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,724,152 and 3,929,892 for process for the manufacture of low fat cream cheese and 5,079,024 and 5,180,604 for processes for the manufacture of fat free cream cheese. While the aforementioned processes are useful in producing low-fat or fat free cream cheese products, these processes could be improved.
Conventional processes for producing low fat or fat free cream cheese products suffer from a number of deficiencies. One major deficiency is that these processes generally produce products which fail to approximate the flavor and texture of traditional cream cheese. Moreover, complicated, cumbersome and inefficient apparati are typically employed to accommodate the extensive mixing, shearing and heating steps required in these processes. U.S. Pat. No. 5,079,024, for example, describes a process for manufacturing a fat free cream cheese product which requires an apparatus which includes two homogenizers as well as three separate mixing vessels in sequence. These vessels provide a specific degree of agitation and shear at successive points in the process. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,180,604 describes a process for making a fat free cream cheese in an apparatus which requires only one vessel. The apparatus, however, is severely limited with respect to the amount of product produced per batch. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an efficient process and apparatus for producing a low fat or fat free cream cheese product which closely resembles traditional cream cheese in flavor and texture.